On October 3rd 2003 VH1 published an interview with Jim James, done by C. Bottomley. The original interview can be found here.
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Since releasing The Tennessee Fire in 1999, James and his confederates have gone from strength to strength. The endorsement of Dutch author Nanne Tepper made them stars in the Netherlands, and Dave Grohl declared 2001's At Dawn his album of the year. Last year they agreed to work for Dave Matthews' ATO Records, as long as their recording studio remained a barn belonging to guitarist Johnny Quaid's granddaddy.
So don't let the beards fool you. These dudes aren't jamming in Georgia graveyards, and they'd probably sniff at Kings of Leon's heartthrob status. But former art student James isn't above admitting Led Zeppelin changed his life - or tackling Erykah Badu's Tyrone. He told VH1 about iPod democracy, the Zep's crunch, and his favorite stuffed bear.
VH1: Early memories are important to you. Did you have a fun childhood?
JJ: I was really lucky. I was raised by great parents and had some great friends. Some of my fondest memories are of things my Mom showed me, of what was beautiful about the world.
VH1: Like what?
JJ: Music and going for walks to the park, 'cause we didn't have a lot of money or anything. Good parents can turn anything into a fantastic, wonderful experience. Even when we were just watching TV, she would pick the right things for us to watch, like The Muppet Show or The Wonderful World of Disney. She wouldn't just plunk us in front of the TV and put on like soap operas or anything.
VH1: Which one of the Muppets is your favorite?
JJ: They're all so beautiful. I think it is a mix between Kermit and Dr. Teeth. I always wanted to be in the Muppets.
VH1: What about Fraggle Rock?
JJ: No, I would always run from the room and hide when that came on. The creatures were really scary; I just couldn't handle it. Something about them being in a cave really freaked me out.
VH1: What's the first song that you taught yourself to play on the guitar?
JJ: Losing My Religion by R.E.M. I started trying to play guitar in seventh or eighth grade. I had been into heavy metal for quite a few years, but then all out of nowhere the huge Seattle thing happened. R.E.M.'s Out of Time and Nevermind were pivotal in making me realize that I could do something with my life & in music. I didn't have to be some big metal dude that could play guitar at like a million miles per hour, but I could be some weird kid who could try and be creative with his guitar and try and make music mean something.
VH1: Your music is a lot more grandiose than Losing My Religion. What happened?
JJ: We enjoy playing, and get so into a song that it gets taken to a certain place on its own. We try not to think about it too much. We let the song guide itself. Some are really simple and some are quite complex.
VH1: How much have the songs on It Still Moves grown from when you first wrote them?
JJ: There are tons of them that are supposed to be even longer! Dancefloors is a really short song, but we were having so much fun with it, that we decided to put some horns in it and go with it for a while. I consider Golden to be a pretty simple short song, but Run Thru has developed over the last three years or so into this weird, big, complex maze of a song. We let them all have their own lives.
VH1: Did you meet Willie Mitchell when you did the horns for Dancefloors at his studio?
JJ: Yeah, he was awesome. He's like 74 or something, and he's a bad, bad man. He liked [the music]. He was like, What kind of drugs you smoking?
VH1: Is there something you never leave home without?
JJ: Definitely music. I just got an iPod, so I've finally moved into the 21st century. I've been able to take tons of my records and put them on one thing. That's been an awesome development.
VH1: Is the iPod killing that communal agreement that goes with putting on an album in the tour van?
JJ: We have a cassette player that we put our iPods through, so we are constantly broadcasting. We have always been butting heads with our CD players, 'cause we all have different tastes. Sometimes we'll pop in some John Prine or some AC/DC or something, and everyone will instantly sit up and gather around like it's Christmas morning around the Christmas tree and start singing. It's really nice.
VH1: Who is the most likely band member to wake up in jail?
JJ: [Laughs.] I don't think any of us are likely to wake up in jail anywhere. We tried to kill off our Motley Crue tendencies. [Our drummer] Patrick likes to have the most fun, but I don't think anyone is going to end up in jail soon. We're such nice guys that every time we trash a hotel room or something, we clean it up the next morning. We end up waking up in the morning feeling guilty. Cleaning ladies fucking love us.
VH1: Everyone likens you to classic rockers like Neil Young. Does dance music mean anything to you?
JJ: Good music means a lot to me. I love good rap music if it's good rap music, I love good dance music if it's good dance music, I love good R&B music if it's good R&B music & There's tons of shitty classic rock, but there is also lots of great classic rock. There's tons of shit in all kinds of music. I'm a real bastard when it comes to music and I hate most music.
VH1: Name me a classic rock band that in your mind is completely overrated.
JJ: Grand Funk Railroad, Foreigner, Boston & I think Skynyrd was overrated as a band. When I think classic rock I think the Band, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Dylan - bands that have achieved their place, but you don't hear them all the time when you turn on the classic rock radio. When you turn on classic rock radio you don't even hear the fucking Beatles! I think to most people classic rock is a joke.
VH1: What's a favorite song that you perform that's not your own?
JJ: I like doing Tyrone by Erykah Badu. It suited me, I felt like I could sing it pretty good. It's just a great groove, and a really funny song, the way she sings it. I thought it would be soulful and funny to have me, this big dude, singing these lyrics about her calling Tyrone, and telling him to pack up his shit and leave. Erykah is an awesome example of great modern R&B music. We do Black Sabbath as well.
VH1: What's the Neil Young disc that you go back to most often?
JJ: I love them all. I have a great bootleg from the Royal Albert Hall in 1971, right after After the Goldrush and before Harvest came out. That's probably the thing I go back to most. I'm more of an acoustic Neil [fan]. I go through different stages. I love his MTV Unplugged album. We were talking to Danny Clinch and he was telling us about putting together the Bonnaroo 2003 DVD. I guess Neil wouldn't let him use any of the footage from the show because he wasn't happy with the performance. But it was fucking awesome! Everyone thought it was one of the best performances he has ever done, yet he wasn't happy.
VH1: If you had $17.99 to spare, what album would you buy for a friend?
JJ: If it was a younger friend who didn't really know the music that I love, I would take that $17.99, add another $10 and buy Physical Graffiti. The first time I heard Led Zeppelin was on Halloween night when I was in fifth grade. It was Ramble On from Led Zeppelin II, and it changed my life.
VH1: So on November 1st, you woke up, and what happened?
JJ: I knew I loved music before that, but after that I was like 'MAAAAAAN!' I knew about Motley Crue and the Muppets and Simon and Garfunkel, but when I heard Ramble On, just the power and mystery, the way the song could have so much spooky qualities, but rock so hard, was something my childlike mind couldn't understand.
VH1: Where did the idea of having a stuffed bear on the album cover come from?
JJ: The art on the albums is very important to me, they're all really thought out. With that one I wanted to create a picture that we made. I had this vision. One day I went up into this barn on John's grandparents' farm. The ceiling structure was like the belly of a whale, and I had the vision of the bear up there. I talked to Sam Erickson who was coming down to do some photos. He finally found this [stuffed] bear out in Kentucky, and I had the guy bring it out to the farm. It was like nine feet tall and it took like six of us to pick it up. We wheeled him in there and moved him around, and made a whole day of it.
VH1: Who has got the bear?
JJ: Here is the thing: we had this bear, we do the photo and we gave him back. Well, we're playing Louisville, and we wanted to rent the bear to put on the stage while we play. The dude said he sold the bear! I called the guy [he sold it to], and he agreed to rent us the bear. He was going to drive it down from Indiana, so I got it all set up with the guy, and I gave him the directions and stuff. But he calls me up and tells me that he ripped the bear's teeth and mouth out - because he [thought] it might scare people at the trade shows, where he rents it out - and replaced it with him eating a salmon. So he totally fcked the bear out of the only chance it had for a good life. We told him we didn't want him any more.
